Aid Box Convoy becomes Aid Box Community.

You are recieving this update because we know you care 

Right now we need your support as much as ever.

Regular donations will help sustain the work we are doing. With only grassroutes organisations like ourselves being the only people supplying life saving aid to displaced poeple in Europe we need your support as much as ever.

In late 2015, Aid Box Convoy embarked on a mission to help the many displaced people in the Dunkerque camp in Northern France. With your support, we provided comfort and necessities to thousands of people far from home, who were starving, cold and terrified. Together, we helped stave off illness, disease and starvation.

Since March 2016, when we felt various French and European aid organisations were supporting the basic needs of the Dunkerque camp, we have changed our focus to help refugees in Greece and, most recently, in Paris. It is estimated that around 1,000 people from the camps are now in Paris sleeping on the streets. A few volunteer groups are battling to keep these people alive and we have worked with them, giving what support we can. Closure of the camp in Calais will only make this situation worse and so our work must go on.

In September we joined forces with Building Support Through Shelter to create Aid Box Community, a new vehicle for our aid efforts. We have focused on creating a physical home for ABC, a centre from where we will offer a range of services to refugees in Bristol.

Sited in central Bristol, the ABC Hub will be the focus for our activities: a warehouse in which to collect and sort donated goods and a drop-in centre for destitute refugees. Here we can provide them with as much support as we can – whether that means providing a hot shower and clean clothes or sending aid boxes to Paris; or advice on how to gain work, where to learn English or navigate the asylum processing system.

Escaping the desperate conditions of the camps in northern France is just one step. They still face many barriers to regaining the quality of life they had in their homelands where the vast majority were skilled, professional people working hard for a living before a range of political, societal or environmental factors tore through their country, ruthlessly shattering lives. Our aim is to help them restore their position, and their dignity, in our society, through practical and pragmatic assistance, as we have done since ABC began.

Of course, setting this up incurs costs. We have achieved a great deal already and we are reaching out again for help in funding the rent of the ABC Hub. We have to find £700 each month to secure the warehouse so our amazing team of volunteers can continue the aid work and help even more people.

ABC runs on the generosity of our staff, who are all volunteers, and this is our only running cost. We do not plan to change this through ‘going professional’ so all money donated goes straight into funding aid services.

If all of you can give an hour of your wages, or even a day’s wages, each month, we can continue to work hard for people who face the most desperate situations any father or mother, son or daughter has to face.

Thank you for reading this and we hope you choose to help us continuing to help others.

Please follow this link to donate https://mydonate.bt.com/donation/start.html?charity=156187